Loss to Oakland leaves us once again on verge of total collapse

You know about bad hair days, right?

Yesterday was a bad Yankee day. 

First, we lost Brett Gardner for the year. We learned the high-tech MRI scans he's undergone since April were done with somebody's Swinger camera, and now he needs elbow surgery, which will probably be handled with a Bic pen. All this time, we waited for him to heal from an ailment that wouldn't heal. We were like those 300 Spartans facing the Persian Army in Thermopylae, expecting reinforcements that would never come, despite Lena Headey's desperate machinations on our behalf, and now we are stuck with Dewayne Wise for the rest of eternity.

Then, last night, we lost to Oakland because the guy who would have replaced Brett Gardner - Humanis Centipedes - hits a home run. And even though Centepides isn't God's gift to baseball - or even, as his highlight video claimed - Cuba's gift, he isn't Walmart cole slaw, either. Moreover, he's exactly the kind of mystery free agent that Old George loved to snap-up, and which his sons, the Steinboys, now avoid like herpes, so they can curry favor from their fellow billionaire owner heirs and heiresses.

OK, I can't push my indignation needle too far into the red here - of all those international names on the market last winter, Centipedes wasn't the one I most wanted; that was Jorge Soler, whom we also didn't get. But Humanis is just one of the latest ones. We didn't get Aroldys Chapman, we didn't get Yu Darvish, we didn't even sign that Japanese infielder whom we got for a song when nobody else bidded - and when anybody pops up in the listings anymore, we hem and we haw, and we don't sign them. After years chasing down El Duques and Irabus and Igawas, and - yeah - sometimes regretting it (although Irabu begot Theodore Roosevelt Lilly, whom we traded for Jeff Weaver, whom we traded for Kevin Brown) - now we sit out the bidding on players who actually do make a difference.

Well, OK, we're still way ahead. But I refuse to make peace with bad Yankee days. Last year, the Redsocks had a 10-game lead in the wild card with barely a month to play. This is how it starts:

One bad hair day launches another. Consider me as Lena Headey. I'm yelling to the Greek assembly. We must hold the line. Bad days, they can stack up like a centipede.